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Re: Candle making Info

Google is a candle makers friend. google is anybodies friend. lol
Start with Mann Lake and better bee for molds and such.
Take some of your wax and practice with it and see what you like to make. Start small. Maybe a mold or two, and a votive mold. You will need to test your wick with your candles. Your wax needs to be clean. If your wax is in a block form, take an axe to it and split it down the center. How does it look? Does it look a bit shiny? Or is it a matt finish? Shiny is not good, there would still be honey in the wax. Even after making candles for 5 years, i split some of the wax i render, just to make sure the quailty is there. You are also going to want to make sure the straining cloth is catching the pollen. Pollen clogs the wicks making it difficult for the candle to burn.

beeswax is a higher temp melting point so the wicks that are used for parrafin are not the same size for beeswax. Go at least 1-2 sizes higher. Squarre braided is the only way to go.
Remember that each extraction of honey produces a variant on the wax. So the wick might not be the same...test test test

good luck. There are alot of candle makers on here and we all have a wee bit of different ways of doing things. I think alot of that has to do with the location of the wax produced

Re: Candle making Info

Thanks Honeyshack,

How do you render your cappings? Do you have a heated seperator, then strain through a cloth into blocks?
Or is there another way without buying a seperator? Once you have it in blocks, then what do you melt it down in? I see the pour pots they sell, but thats as far as they go.

Any "good" books" you may recommend? I need to get the product from the cappings stage, minus most of the honey to the block stage first. Then I can order a couple of molds and practice as you noted.

Re: Candle making Info

my good book is reading on line. Googleing beeswax candles and reading what i can. Most candle books are geared towards parrafin and there are many differences between the two waxes

To render my cappings, i bought a piece of equipment last year. This is because of the increased amount of cappings to do.

Before that i used a roaster in the oven with water, or o bought an old pot from the good will...not aluminum.. and boiled for a short amount of time in water then strained. For smaller amounts of wax, I used pantyhose to put the cappings in, and then tossed the hose and slum gum from the pot.

Now is see the big thing is to let the water and the wax settle on low heat after boiling. The settling helps the wax and pollen and honey separate. The water works well to separate the honey from the wax.

Recently i bought a cappings melter from Maxant. It is not water jacketed, and the element is in water with everything else. It has 3 spigots for draining. Again the key is to let the wax sit with heat on it after the short boil. This alows the particles to layer. Once it settles, I use the top spigot to drain the wax into a rubber maid wash bin with boiling water in the bottom. This again give the wax added time to settle and allow the water to separate any pollen that got left behind. When the wax come out of the cappings melter i have a strainer and a few layers of 100 mesh straining cloth (used for honey filtering) to catch anything that got missed.
I think that the first wax melt is the most important because the more the impurities are removed here, the better the end product.

Then i went to princess auto and bought a few stainless steel jugs to melt the wax inthe oven when ready to make candles. Or use as a double boil method with an old pot on the stove. You also need a couple of candy thermometers to keep an eye on the temp.
I used an axe to break apart the wax and put in the jugs, melted and poured.

I have tried the flat in a candle or two with not great results. In my experience the squarre braided offers more for the high density wax. The beeswax needs a stronger flame to burn the wax. Something a flat can not do. As for cored wicks, I do not think they can properly burn a candle.

I have had very good results with squarre braided.

that and everything i have read has stated squarre braided for beeswax

Re: Candle making Info

Also use square braided wicks on everything but my pillars where I use a 60 ply flat braided wick. Just make sure to test. Even after making candles for more than 8 years, I still find myself changing wicks on the same candles I had working fine with another. I think a lot of that has to do with the properties of your wax, i.e. pollen, water and honey content. You just can't get the exact same wax with every batch you render.

Re: Candle making Info

I buy my supplies (except for beeswax) for candles from Mann Lake and Betterbee. Bought square braided wicks from both places. Both were fine. I am not familiar with wicks from candlewic, but based on the description and picture, they seem fine, too.

Don't have any books on making beeswax candles. Learned all I needed by reading all the old candle threads/posts by others on Beesource.

KQ6AR, I appreciate the link for peak as they have info. and supplies for making soaps also. Will have to check that out. Thanks.

Re: Candle making Info

I bought the 4/0 wick from Mann Lake and it was square braid (even though it didn't mention "square"). I believe we asked them on the phone before placing the order. My guess is regarding Mann Lake ....if it isn't ply (as in 60 ply), it is square braid.